The Art of lossless image compression, 12th release

Here are the results of 10 tests performed to compare lossless compression
of True Color (24-bit) images by:
HP Labs' software implementation of JPEG-LS,
by famous and popular PKZIP 2.50, BOA 0.58b, BMF 0.5, UHIC 1.0,
by some archivers with _special_ algorithms for 24-bit images: Eri32 3.7fre,
Arhangel 1.39a6, UFA32 0.04b1, RKIVE 1.92b1, UHarc 0.2, ESP 1.92, WinRar 2.50,
(sorry, HAP, IMP, SZIP, ARJ and all other excellent archivers were not tested)
and results on same images of the famous PNG algorithm and format
created by Display 1.89a, SEA 1.3, Image Alchemy 1.10.
See Archive Comparison Test by Jeff Gilchrist for more details:
http://act.by.net/
If anybody wants to start or continue such tests,
or can suggest some other sets of images, or other compression programs,
(not sources or algorithm descriptions ; programs for DOS or Windows only)
or knows we have missed something important,
(some new fantastic technology, an algorithm or even a program capable
of lossless compression of up to 1000:1 and lossy compression of
up to 10000:1 , we hear about it from time to time since our XTs)
please let us know immediately: ratush@srsc-gw.sscc.ru Thank you!

What's new:

Nearly everything:
- new, much better computer was used for tests;
- 75 new images were added to 5th, 6,7 and 8th sets,
we now have 297 files totalling 676,435,722 bytes;
- even old images with older programs were re-tested
using new 64Mb amount of RAM, and newer windows98;
- new methods were used, see .BAT files for details;
- nearly all .BAT files are also included now:
they'll help you to repeat any of our tests and/or do your own,
and/or to understand how they were done (i.e. how to run all those programs!)
all .BATs except those used to format data for this text you are reading now.
- new set of 230 files was made for section 2 "Time results":
well-known 23 Kodak images copied ten times like so:
copy ko*.bmp k1*.*
... (see ICOPY.BAT)
copy ko*.bmp k9*.*
NO program could detect and use this great redundancy!
- new versions of archivers were tested:
Arhangel 1.39a6, Pkzip 2.50, WinRar 2.50, Eri32 3.7fre, BMF 0.5
- SEA 1.3 was added instead of CompuShow 2000! 2.04a,
as the latter runs on "error 004 at 084E:07CB" every 10 or 20 files,
can't produce readable BitMaPs sometimes (Clegg,Frymire,Serrano etc)
and finally it's the only program not supporting command line mode.
Three lossless JPEG programs mentioned in comp.compression FAQ -
> [15] Where can I get image compression programs?
> ftp://havefun.stanford.edu/pub/jpeg/JPEGv1.2.1.tar.Z (has lossless mode)
> ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/multimed/ljpg.tar.Z (lossless jpeg)
> http://idt.net/~dclunie/jpegls.html (lossless jpeg by David Clunie)
were not tested at all: no executables were found in these packages;
C sources only, and other interesting texts
(readme files, copyright and portability notices, test images, etc...)
The third link reports that
> It only handles one component (ie. grayscale images) for now.
while the forth desirable link from that section [15]
> ppm2pz: (lossless 24-bit image compression)
> http://www.jyu.fi/~kuru/compression.html
seems to be not valid (since 1997, by the way).
Unfortunately the results of
> the revolutionary lossless
> image-compression engine
> "The New Standard for Lossless PhotoQuality Compression"
(visit http://www.bitjazz.com/index.html now)
were NOT included:
the evaluation version from http://www.bitjazz.com/binaries/PhotoJazzSetup.exe
was unable to losslessly extract test images it compressed.
Exactly so:
> Note: a magic watermark overlay is applied to PhotoJazz images
> saved during evaluation.

Some WARNINGS again:

ESP 1.92 has some bugs and was unable to correctly uncompress
some test images: they are (re)named in our tests as
AYMAR,GELSNGR,NACHTSH,OTELLIN,VADASZ,YASSO,YU1,
DP08189,DP2179D,L217C-3,CONCEP3,PS09157,V42798C.
ESP doesn't even report something like "CRC fails"...as if everything is OK.
Rkive 1.92b1 failed to losslessly uncompress most images
from 6th, 7th and 8th tests, and also Clegg, Frymire, Serrano from 5th.
It reports
"ERROR: File fails CRC check!.
Archive failed integrity check."
Arhangel failed to losslessly uncompress DP04269 and IN10019 ("CRC error").
BMF coudn't compress L217C-3 with "-q8" ("Not enough memory")
but "-q6" and "-q9" didn't cause this error on this image,
and twice larger files did not. It still doesn't save all fields
of BMP header, but since all images are now stored in .BMF format,
this unimportant bug will never be noticed again. You'll get exactly same
images when converting them back to BMP from BMF, but not the same files.
Two of the three PNG-producing programs - Display and SEA - they also do so,
while the third - Alchemy - can't convert files larger than about 4Mb to PNG
("Out of memory condition #9.")
Display was used to compress those 30 or 40 large images.
The LATEST RELEASE, and nine previous versions of these tests
can be found at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/1995/